2015 Census Result: Statistics Sierra Leone Gives Latest Update

Statistics Sierra Leone will start data entry this week and work towards publishing the provisional result of the 2015 Population and Housing Census in March 2016, Tejan Kabbah Public Relations Officer said in an interview last Wednesday.

Funding for the 2015 Census came from the Le.65 billion allocated to the agency for its operations from 2012 to 2017. Government provided about 75 percent of the census budget and the remaining 25 percent came from donors especially UNFPA as logistics.

Statistics undertook a 4 day mopping up exercise to count all those left out during the December 5 -18 registration period. The mopping up exercise extended the registration up to the 23rd December to ensure nobody was left out. The census questions ranged from household income to sources of information.

The need for census is not limited to boundary delimitation, a situation that politicians are interested in and a thing that almost dominated the whole process. It is about allocation of resources based on the priorities of various communities. The development side of the exercise is completely lost in arguments about how constituencies should be delimited.